Two mainstays of Boston’s independent music scene join forces, just not in the way you probably expected. Tanya Donnelly (who doesn’t live in Boston any more) is best known for the yowling, uninhibited punk rock of Belly and the Throwing Muses, as well as her more recent guitar-driven work with 50 Foot Wave. Brokaw has done a million things, including genre-establishing bands like Come and Codeine, but he’s never done anything like this. The “this” in this case is a quartet of medieval choral songs, arranged for Brokaw’s moody, atmospheric guitar and Donnelly’s airiest, purest vocal stylings.
The project began as a one-off when the pair played a benefit in late 2004. Brokaw had been exploring early music influences, finding…
Tag Archive: Chris Brokaw
Chris Brokaw’s latest is a murky, moody affair, written quickly, according to the artist, on a 1960s Teisco Del Ray guitar. It’s far more solitary than Puritan, his last solo full-length, sheathed in echo and overtone, his voice shrouded in eerie, cloudy atmospherics. The guitar tone is more like what we heard in 2023’s all-instrumental Live at the Decommissioned Power Station than the clear, song-structured reveries in Puritan.
Brokaw describes his set-up with specificity, as designed by “Belgian luthier Flip Scipio with heavy gauge flat wound strings and an .80 gauge low E string tuned down to a low A, which reframes how you play the instrument.” But whatever the alignment of gear, the sound envelops the ear like a grey fog rolling in from the ocean,…